It also had a fat black hall-porter in a conductor's uniform, and this functionary informed Mrs. Heth that Mr. Kerr was momentarily detained at the bank, but had telephoned orders that any callers he might have were to be shown right up. The Heth ladies were shown right up.
Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs. Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond.
"It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a foot-tub."
Carlisle, looking over her mother's shoulder, laughed. "You couldn't splash about much.... You shave at that, I suppose."
"I don't. One shaves. There's a better apartment he could have got for the same price, but manlike he didn't find it out till too late. What's this--bedroom?... Yes, there's the bed."
They stepped back into the sitting-room, and Carlisle, strolling aimlessly about, became a little silent and distrait.
It is possibly true, as crusty single-men affirm, that a certain solacing faculty inheres in beautiful ladies: the faculty, namely, of explaining all apparently unwelcome situations upon theories quite flattering to themselves. But Carlisle surely needed no such make-believe in this moment of rather excited expectancy.
Of course she knew well enough what inferences Evey and Mattie, for instance (in both of whom there was a certain amount of the cat), would have drawn from the fact that Mr. Canning, last month, had not seemed to follow up in anyway their very interesting meeting at the Beach. She alone knew the real circumstances, however, and it had become quite clear to her that Mr. Canning's demeanor was only what was to be expected. He was the proudest of men, and (that awful night at the Beach) she had expelled him from her presence like a schoolboy. Naturally he had been annoyed and offended--stung even into the rudeness of abandoning her in a summer-house to an entire stranger. How could you possibly wonder (unless feline) that he, great unsocial at best, had thereafter remained silent inside his fort?...
"How like a man," breathed Mrs. Heth, glancing at her watch, "to pick out this day of all others to be detained at a bank."